Then the small trees that got chopped down today wouldn’t go to waste. They added nutrients to the soil and could even prevent landslides. I pondered these things as I followed Iwao back up the slope.

can get some idea of the untapped potential of agriculture by reading F. H. King’s fascinating 1911 book, Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan, which explains how these regions sustained enormous populations for millennia on tiny amounts of land, without mechanization, pesticides, or chemical fertilizers.